Breath
by ongreenergrasses
Summary: Noun. A brief moment; the time required for one act of respiration. A sign, hint, or suggestion.


**So I decided to contribute to two of my favorite fandoms, notably with a totally unorthodox hated by most pairing - Rose/Loki. Hi. Don't hurt me. No slash or anything, just friends. Cause nobody ships Ten/Rose harder than moi.**

Sometimes, she just had to get away.

Oh, there wasn't anything WRONG with her new life here on this Earth. She had a loving, supportive family; a respectable job that provided a rather large income; her own loft in Soho across the street from a costume shop and a Thai restaurant with ridiculously good food. She was 26 years old and entirely self-sufficient with a savings account at the local bank and could afford to buy herself clothes if she wanted to. It was the life of a privileged woman, she had no delusions about it, and if you asked anyone on Earth they'd say she was living the high life.

But her standards weren't Earth standards.

She'd found a place, a little hidden place tucked away in a back alley two blocks down where nobody went, not even the homeless people, because it was cold and windy and open and rather ugly. Someone had once upon a time snuck into an old abandoned warehouse and taken out part of the east wall and a section of the roof, and then planted a garden of flowers and put in a pool stocked with koi or something similar. It had once upon a time been very pretty, she was sure, but now the pond was covered in a light green blanket of scum and most all the flowers had been strangled by a mighty crop of weeds. She opened the door and knew that nobody knew about this place any longer; something had happened to the original owner, some tragic accident, and now it was just waiting for a new person to come in and breathe into it.

Sometimes, she would bring some of her plans or papers from work, and sit and do those, or she'd bring her own personal notebook that nobody knew about and write a little bit, but most often she brought nothing at all and just sat and thought. She made so many of her decisions and plans in that warehouse, more than she'd care to admit.

It was one of those times that she first saw him. She pushed open the door and heard a snarl, so she thought it might be some sort of animal (it wasn't the first time one had become trapped). But then she flicked on her torch and looked over and it was a man. It was raining out, but that didn't seem to matter to him, as he was sitting cross legged by that clouded pool of water, which was right under – nothing as that was where the roof had been removed.

She was good at reading people; she knew that something had gone terribly wrong in that man's life, and she thought he must have gone a little bit mad because he was completely soaked with water and rocking a little bit from side to side. But she also knew that you never ever disturb a person like that, so she didn't say anything, just went over to a drier spot and propped her torch up on one of the stones surrounding the garden plot and began working.

She had a presentation the next day, so she had brought some of her notes and was reading them to herself, and she didn't realize that the man was speaking too until she stopped and the voice continued. But he was talking to himself, and she was talking to herself, and their two paths never lined up. She had to leave at about eleven so she wouldn't look completely dead the next day, and as she pulled open the door it creaked loudly and he turned to look at the source of the sound and in that instant she knew he was not from that world.

He was there from then on. Every day, always there. Never addressing her, rarely even acknowledging her presence, but he was _always there_ and sometimes it felt like a comfort and sometimes it felt like a curse.

He usually talked to himself. She had recognized almost immediately that he was mad, and she found that she didn't mind, because she thought that she had been going mad herself for quite some time and he was just brave enough to show people that not all was well. He didn't just talk, no, he argued, scolded, prayed, pleaded with people that she could not see. She did not know if he was solid, a person existing right there and now, or merely a hologram image. She didn't touch him to find out.

One day she brought her plans for the cannon. It was coming along nicely, everything was within the parameters of theoretical physics, for once, and if she was truly honest with herself, she was sick of the damn plans and wanted to start building already. So she had taken the blueprints home with her to finish but hadn't been able to concentrate, and finally she had packed everything up and set out for the warehouse.

She didn't notice that he had come up behind her until a cool hand touched her shoulder. She whirled around so fast she nearly knocked the papers into the pool, and some part of her noted that he really was there, he could touch her, but mostly all she did was stare at him, stare directly into his eyes, looking for a threat or hostility or some indication that he was –

But all she saw was the slightest bit of kindness, written in a request. _Let me help._

She passed him the papers and pen without a word and just watched him, praying to an unknown deity that he wouldn't smudge them or drop them or something else awful, because they were all she had left, and she thought maybe she should mention that before he started making any radical changes. He studied the plans, and then he looked back up at her. _You did these yourself?_

She raised her chin a little bit. _Yes, I bloody well did, and what's it to you?_

_ These – I'm impressed._

He crossed a few things out and added others. Flipped through the pages, scribbled a couple notes in the margins. Then handed back the stack of papers and cleared his throat and started to talk.

He was explaining his changes to her. She sat there, rapt, and listened. Just listened. He had to go back and explain things in simpler words sometimes, and she could see how that irritated him, but she couldn't help it. She didn't interrupt, she was the perfect listener, and she wondered if he knew that previously only one person had ever had her full attention like this.

She brought the plans back often after that, told him how construction was progressing. He listened and suggested things, told her what to adjust and what to remove, and every day she knew again that he really was not from this Earth, nor a parallel one. No, he was from another planet, a higher planet, and he had done things like this before, or at least knew a lot about them, because everything he suggested worked. She trusted him, and she knew she shouldn't but she did, if not for his knowledge then for how familiar he seemed.

He reminded her so strongly of another man. Both were tall and scrawny and handsome, both had a smile that could liquefy anything in an instant. Both had a quick wit and a silver tongue. Both were alone and lonely and lost. Both were gods, and both were really, truly, properly dangerous. And yet she didn't care.

The cannon was now nearing completion and work quickly became her primary focus. For her, gains had always far outshone the risks, and although she knew what she was attempting was beyond risky, the reward she could gain seemed to be worth anything she might lose. She kept visiting the warehouse, but soon it was only every other day, and then every two. Her companion had become a little more morose, a little more scattered, a little more sad, and she had no idea why because she knew absolutely nothing about him.

He knew something about what was going to happen to her, and he wouldn't say it. She asked several times, but first he got angry and then he told her that he wasn't allowed to say because that was against the laws of time, and he watched as she recoiled as if she'd been slapped and then turned and ran from the warehouse. He had no idea what he'd said.

She returned to the warehouse one day and there was no sign of him. She looked everywhere, in every corner, behind every single discarded piece of metal, hell, she even ran through all the weeds in the plot. She looked everywhere for that strange lonely man, but he wasn't there. The next day was the same.

The day after that had a change in the warehouse. Sometime in the past twenty-four hours, someone had entered and graffitied the word _Goodbye_ in enormous letters on the wall. The green paint told her it was him, because however little she may have learnt about her mysterious stranger, she knew that his favorite color was green.

She thinks of that man sometimes, late at night, when her silly husband is rewiring the toaster in the kitchen and her daughter is asleep. She wonders what happened to that strange lonely man, and deep down she knows he must be dead, but she likes to pretend otherwise. She likes to think that he met a lovely girl (or boy) back on his world and found the happiness she believes he deserves.

He doesn't think of her, but that is because he can't any more. He used to, occasionally, when he was pacing round and waiting, going even more mad from the incessant waiting, waiting, waiting to die. Originally he had just been imprisoned, but then they'd discovered his secret, how he was sneaking out and associating with that human, and now they'd penalized him for it. He hoped that the cannon had worked (he thought it must have) and that she had found that man he knew she was looking for, and he hoped that aforementioned man loved that silly girl, because he knew that she loved him.

He did think of her at that moment, that moment where he looked and saw all those faces, all those faces of people they said he'd betrayed and let down and ruined and broken their hearts. They all blurred together and he didn't feel anything, he didn't care. He wondered idly what he would think of, in those last few seconds, and suddenly the answer popped into his head.

Her.

Because she was so naïve, and silly, and such a waste of his time, but he had helped her nonetheless. He had "done right by her", he believed she said, and it was not only that he had done right by a person, but a little human girl person, and he looked out at that blurry sea of faces and laughed. Because he wasn't bad, and he wasn't good, but she had been something worth escaping for.

He almost wanted to thank her.


End file.
